T.C. Smout writes:

Richard Preston’s The Wild Trees is a brisk American account of climbing the tallest trees on earth. It is described as ‘narrative non-fiction’: the events are ‘factual’, the characters ‘real’, and their reported thoughts, feelings and dialogue have been built from interviews and ‘fact-checked’. The goal is to ‘reveal people and realms that nobody had ever imagined’. The focus is on a handful of enthusiasts who set out to climb the highest trees on earth, the redwoods of California, and who incidentally found a peculiar and distinctive ecosystem of epiphytes and mosses in the crown of the trees. One could wish for more detail about the ecosystem and less about the emotions and sex lives of the enthusiasts (even in the tree tops), however fact-checked the latter may be.

(LRB 29 November 2007)

The Coast or California Redwood Sequoia sempervirens is the world's tallest tree, and one of its most massive organisms of any sort. The Redwood canopy, often more than 300 feet from the ground, is a unique ecosystem, home to its own suite of plant, invertebrate, bird and even amphibian species, but until recently its inaccessibility has made it almost impossible to explore. In the style of an adventure story, Richard Preston describes how Steve Sillett and Marie Antoine, an intrepid husband and wife team assisted by their tree-obsessed graduate students, opened up this fascinating habitat for scientific study. In the LA Times, Thomas Curwen wrote: 'Neither science nor moralising drives this story. Forget about how we’re homogenising the Earth's biosphere; forget about the human need to be awed by something bigger than ourselves. These are sentiments that have often been expressed. What Preston offers is a glimpse into the lives of these angel-headed hipsters, who took root, found meaning and flourished in a digitised, catalogued and oversubscribed world. Turn the pages and you'll find your obsession growing with theirs, until finally their zonked-out wonder becomes your own.'

Allen Lane | hardback 294 pp. |ISBN: 9781846140235